Wind Power Poised For More Growth In West Texas

Texas has been known to take the “go big or go home” challenge to heart, and that attitude is reflected in its approach to wind energy. On the road to achieving a state goal of getting 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources, Texas quickly grabbed the title of top wind energy producer in the nation [PDF].

And more could be on the way: Dallas-based Tri Global Energy, which boasts a long roster of big wind projects at various stages of planning, said it had received funding to help it along the way in developing the 500-megawatt (MW) South Plains Wind project in Floyd County, in West Texas.

image via Shutterstock

Tri Global calls this a “community wind farm,” because, it said, “landowners and community investors … provided seed money” to get the project started. But this is nothing like the kind of community wind farms we’ve covered before, such as the three-turbine, 1.5-MW one in Scotland; or the two-turbine 4.1-MW one in Australia; or even the six-turbine, 9-MW  one in Oregon.

At 500 MW, this is a massive project, as big as all but around 10 that exist in the world today, according to this list on Wikipedia. And among the new participants in the project, Tri Global said, is Westerly Wind, a portfolio company of US Renewables Group, with identifies itself as “one of the largest investment firms focused exclusively on the renewable energy industry.”

[source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Earthtechling/~3/2nLaf9vyFCA/]